An indexable face milling cutter which is this type of cutting tool has a concave portion at an outer periphery in the front end portion of a tool body to open toward a radial outside of the tool body and a front end side of the tool body. This concave portion is configured to form therein a mounting seat for removably installing a cutting insert (cutting tip) having a cutting blade. A seating member is disposed in the mounting seat and the seating member has a wall face directed at a radial outside of the tool body and a wall face directed at a forward side in a tool rotational direction, which are formed so as to extend toward the front end side of the tool body. The cutting insert is seated on the wall face directed at the forward side in the tool rotational direction of the seating member, and a side face of the cutting insert directed at a radial inside of the tool body contacts with the wall face of the seating member directed at the radial outside of the tool body, thus pressing the cutting insert toward a backward side in the tool rotational direction by a wedge member. See Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-130738, esp. FIG. 4.
In the face milling cutter described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-130738, however, when the cutting insert is inserted into and taken out of the mounting seat by releasing a pressing pressure of the wedge member in a state where the opening of the concave portion in the tool body is directed in the gravity direction, the cutting insert is possibly dropped and missed. Therefore, it can not be easy to perform a replacement operation of a small-size cutting insert or a replacement operation thereof on a machine tool.
The present invention is made for solving the aforementioned problem and an object of the present invention is to provide a temporary coupling mechanism for a cutting tip suitable for facilitating a removable operation of a cutting tip to a tip mounting seat and an indexable cutting tool equipped with the mechanism.